What is early help?

Every family goes through challenging times at some point. Early help means working with you and your family to try and overcome any problems you may be facing.

Early help is for everybody, for families with children and young people of any age. And it’s consent based and your choice whether to have it or not.

Support for families includes: 

• Providing information and signposting to other services in your local area. 
• Liaising with external services e.g. Housing, Children and Family Wellbeing Service
• Attendance and support at school including advice and support to promote good attendance.
• Support during appointments and in meetings.
• Help to complete paperwork and forms e.g. housing, school letters, free school meals, high school applications
• Referrals to outside agencies
• Guidance with access to training and parent workshops.
• Emotional support for parents
• Early Help Assessments/ TAF (Team Around the Family) meetings. 
• Give parents access to SEND Guidance and Support including from the school SENCO Mrs Smith
• Support for transitioning pupils.

Why would I want early help?

There are lots of reasons why families may require early help. It could be that you’re worried about your child’s health, including mental health and wellbeing, development or behaviour, or how they’re doing at school. It may be that you’re worried about money or housing and how that is affecting your family. Maybe your child or family is affected by domestic abuse, drugs, alcohol, or crime. Perhaps your child is a carer for their SEND sibling, or maybe you’ve had bereavement in the family that’s made life a challenge. We are here to support you with any queries you may have about support your child or family.

Where can I get early help?

If you feel you and your family might need support to solve some problems, please do not hesitate to contact Mrs Marsden in school.

What will happen when I ask for early help?

We will invite you to come into school and we will talk about the problems you’re experiencing. Working together, we will look at what help and support you think you might need. This is called an early help assessment.

Early help assessment is nothing to be worried about. It’s just a conversation to work out how to help you determine what it is you feel you need support with and how this can be done.  You can talk about things that are going well and things that you’re proud of as well as things that you’re finding a challenge.

We will also discuss your child or children in your family to make sure they understand how they are feeling and anything they think they might want some help with. 

What happens next will be different for every family. If an Early Help assessment is carried out and actions are identified we will then arrange Team Around the Family (TAF) meetings. Again this is nothing to be worried about. It just ensures we have a regular meeting with all professionals involved to get the best outcome for the family. You have control over what happens next and can say what you want.

All of this is consent based, if consent is withdrawn then the process stops.

If you decide you’d like some help, the person you talked with will ask if they can share details of your conversation. You need to be happy with this and give your permission. This is to make sure the people who will be supporting you are able to do a good job for you and understand the journey you and your family have been on.

Sharing information

There may be times when the person you talked to has to share information without consent. This includes:

 -if they think a child is at risk of harm

 -if they think an adult is at risk of harm
-if they think the information could help prevent or detect a serious crime

Children’s Social care won’t get involved unless one of these things happens, or unless the circumstances in your family change and become more serious.

If you have any questions, please speak to Mrs Marsden in school or on 01282 426 774 to arrange a time to talk.